


of course

by Zoom_Zoom_Pow2020



Category: Alex Stern - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, F/F, First Kiss, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoom_Zoom_Pow2020/pseuds/Zoom_Zoom_Pow2020
Summary: Dawes sees Galaxy Stern for the first time, and thinksdangerous. Then she thinksbeautifuland that’s so much worse.
Relationships: Pamela Dawes/Alex Stern
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: YA_Lit_Fan_Fic_Exchange





	of course

It all comes back to tarot.

Maybe that’s not fair. She knows that she’s here now because of her own choices—nothing more, nothing less. But it’s so much easier to blame it on tarot.

Her sister has finally stopped hovering, poking her head into the guest room every quarter-hour like clockwork. Mag’s apartment is small, and that’s only seemed to exacerbate the mothering. It’s not like she’s _dying._

Anymore.

Shit.

Dawes thinks about picking up her phone, reading Alex’s texts, listening to her voicemails. She’s left things unfinished, she knows she has. 

The cards say so.

Dawes rolls over and closes her eyes.

~

Dawes sees Galaxy Stern for the first time and thinks _dangerous_. Then she thinks _beautiful_ and that’s so much worse.

~

She wakes up in the late afternoon. There’s an ugly knit blanket covering her from shoulder to knee—probably something Mag made in one of her DIY phases. Her feet are cold. Dawes closes her eyes and pictures Alex—vomiting blood, holding that Wolf’s Head girl by the lip, crushed to death under Blake Keely. She pictures Alex, bruised and sleeping, pressed against her in the hospital.

_Dangerous. Beautiful. Breakable._

It’s the last one that Dawes didn’t expect. Nothing about Alex screams fragile, or unsure, or vulnerable, but she should’ve known better. Dawes keeps all her hard parts hidden, covered in soft sweatshirts and awkward small talk and trays of fancy sandwiches. When she needs to be sharp, to tell Sandow off and bash Keely’s head in, she can do it. Alex does the opposite. Hard hiding soft. 

She’s breathtaking. Dawes didn’t let herself look at first, but once she started she couldn’t look away.

Dawes thinks about her phone, about Alex’s texts and voicemails. Then she thinks about Alex’s empty hospital room and the pity on Mag’s face. _Silly little Pam, thinking you were someone to somebody._

Her sister isn’t home. The apartment feels too empty for that. Dissertation. Right. She can do that. 

Maybe the cards will shut up if she pays attention to them. She reaches for her headphones.

~

Dawes sees Alex for the first time, thinks _dangerous_ and _beautiful_ and _no_. She knows how these things go. Alex Stern would chew her up and spit her out before she could ever get close. Darlington clearly doesn’t see it—only sees a mystery—but then he’s always been far too trusting. Dawes likes him for that and for his brilliance and his kindness. She also knows that he doesn’t notice _danger_ like a normal person. 

Dawes likes him, cares about him, but she’s too smart to draw Alex’s attention. She hasn’t really _seen_ Dawes yet, and the best thing for the both of them is to keep it that way.

~

After dinner with Mag and her boyfriend, Dawes thinks she could sleep again. It’s hard, laughing along with her perfect sister and perfect Chris with his white teeth and lack of worry lines. He responds to Dawes’ awkward small talk with too little charm, and too much condescension. She wonders what Mag said about her: _my sister Pam, she’s a little weird but harmless, forgettable._

Dawes would like to be forgotten—would like to sink into her sweater, into her books—and never come out again. Weird is accurate enough with tarot and magic and Lethe. But harmless… The marble bust sank into Keely’s skull so easily, Alex stopped breathing so easily. None of that should’ve been so easy, for someone harmless.

Dawes doesn’t stay in the kitchen once the food is gone. She goes back to Mag’s guest room and shuts the door. Locks it. Wedges a chair under the knob. Then she crawls in bed, pulls the blankets over her head, and cries.

~

Dawes knows, that first time that Alex says, “I need you to go with me on an errand,” that she’s done for. She knows it every time Alex turns to her for help, every time she falters and lets Dawes take care of her. She knows it every time Alex reaches for her—out of necessity at first, but casually after that—like Dawes is simply a part of her orbit, meant to be there. She knows it every time she finds herself reaching back.

She’s never felt so needed as when she wrapped Alex in that shroud, told her she would be okay. She’s never felt so protected as when Alex held her tight after the failure at Black Elm. 

The hospital—curled together, safe. What would have happened, if neither of them ran?

~

Mag wakes her up a little after seven, rattles the door. “Pam! Someone from Yale left a message for you. It sounded important.” Dawes doesn’t move for a long time. She doesn’t want to go back yet, doesn’t want to think. The societies are getting away with it, Darlington’s gone, and Alex ran. Dawes is a murderer.

The front door slams. Dawes gets out of bed, puts the chair back in its place, and walks to the kitchen.

There’s a notepad with a number that she knows by heart: the Lethe board. It’s not Sandow and before Dawes even starts to dial, unease crawls up her throat. The cards told her. They told her she wasn’t done and she ignored them. Why didn’t she pick up her phone? If Alex is dead-

She dials.

“Oculus speaking.”

~

Dawes hangs up on the board and calls a car. She doesn’t remember getting her things together, but she has her laptop bag with her when she stumbles onto the sidewalk in front of Vanderbilt Hall. She tries to remember Alex’s room number, but it’s hard to think over the panic that started when the board told her Sandow was dead. They hadn’t said anything about Alex, so she had to be fine.

That absence wasn’t comforting when she finally read through her texts in the back of the car. Something about the Bridegroom, an SOS, a message telling Dawes who murdered her if she disappeared. 

Dawes hadn’t seen the job through. What kind of terrible Oculus was she? What kind of terrible friend?

She waits for another undergrad to walk into the residence hall and shadows her in. 

The long line of doors with cheesy name tags hasn’t changed much since her last time in a dorm. Dawes checks the first floor, and then the second. She wants to run, but she already looks out of place in freshmen housing and she can’t make it worse. On the third floor, she finds the room. The door has four states cut out of construction paper: at eye level, a hot pink California with “Galaxy S.” written in silver sharpie. Dawes knocks before she can talk herself out of it. 

A blonde girl opens the door, dressed for a morning run. She eyes Dawes, and Dawes curls in on herself. She can feel her bun half-undone, knows there are dark circles under her eyes, knows that her sweatpants have seen better days. This was a mistake. “Can I help you?”

She’s made it this far. “Is Alex here?”

The girl—no, her name is Lauren—looks at her for another moment, narrows her eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

“Please. It’s important.”

Lauren sighs and opens the door to let her into the common room. “I’ll go wake her up.” 

Alex doesn’t have class until 10, of course she wouldn’t be awake yet. This was definitely a mistake.

Rubbing her eyes, dark hair a disaster, Alex appears in the doorway. She’s fine, she’s totally fine. Her long-sleeved shirt slips down one shoulder enough that Dawes can just see the start of a snake on her collarbone. A match to the ones on her hips, the ones Dawes had almost touched that day with the crucible. This one hadn’t been there before. The snakes suit her, the Viper of Lethe. Dawes swallows around an uncomfortably dry throat. She wants to kiss her, has since the beginning, but here, like this, it’s hard to think about anything else.

“Dawes?” Alex looks surprised—a little angry and a little hurt.

Dawes is across the room before she means to be. Her hand brushes Alex’s shoulder and she hesitates. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Alex, I’m so sorry.”

Alex catches her gaze, eyes dark and considering. She nods and pulls Dawes the rest of the way in. There’s that feeling of safety again, so sharp it takes her breath away. God, Dawes wants to kiss her.

“You’ll stay, won’t you?” Alex asks, and Dawes remembers asking the same question that night everything went wrong. That night, Alex said _of course._ All of those prickles, all of that danger, all of that vulnerability, and Alex said _of course._

“Of course,” Dawes says, because she was never going to say anything else. 

When Dawes finally convinces her fingers to release their hold on Alex’s shirt, she takes a step back. Distance, because if she doesn’t take it now, she never will. But Alex reaches out again, casually, and tugs on the loose hair falling out of Dawes’s bun. Playful, teasing, like she doesn’t know how distracting she is. 

“Are you okay?” Dawes asks before she can stop herself. “Is the bite healing okay? Sandow didn’t-”

“I can take care of myself, you know,” Alex says, smirk just barely twisting her lips.

Dawes feels her own lips twitch in response. “Considering the number of times you’ve bled all over me this semester, forgive me if I doubt that.” Was that too far? Dawes doesn’t know how to do this, how to tease, how to make Alex _get it._

Alex laughs and smiles at her. Fierce, breathtaking. “I love it when you’re bitchy, Dawes.”

Bitchy. _Bitchy_ , she says. Dawes is absolutely done. She literally killed someone for Alex, and she still isn’t getting it. “Either you’re really bad at knowing when someone’s flirting, or I’m a lot worse at this than I remember.”

Shit. Did she really just say that out loud? 

Alex’s smile drops. Dawes can feel her heart pounding in her throat, cutting off her air. Alex reaches out, so slow, and tucks the loose hair behind Dawes’s ear. Her eyes are hard to read, but there’s something there, something considering. Dawes can’t help the way her own gaze drops, catches on the snake just barely visible, drifts upwards and lingers on Alex’s lips.

“Do you really mean that?” Alex asks. There’s the sharpness again, the danger that Dawes tried to avoid and got sucked into instead. Alex is dangerous, wild, but when she asked if Dawes was afraid of her, Dawes meant it when she said no. She knows, with more certainty than she knows anything, even tarot, that Alex would never hurt her.

“Yes,” Dawes says. And Alex kisses her.

Dawes kisses her back.

Alex doesn’t make it to class that morning.

~

“So,” Alex says. The wind shakes the trees and the weight of the graveyard makes Dawes shiver. She doesn’t know how Alex deals with it. When Dawes reaches for her hand, Alex takes it without question. Maybe that’s how. “Who’s ready to go to hell?”


End file.
